AMYMSA Swim Meet

Race: Masters Swim Meet (scy)
Date: January 6, 2013
Location: Grove City, Pa.

Event #1: 100-yard Individual Medley
Time: 1:18.81
Age Group Rank: 4 out of 4
I had a great swim meet today! It's not even that my times were that great, but I had a lousy week and I needed this success. I started off with the 100-IM. My goggles leaked on my initial dive, but not terribly so. I was well ahead of my nearest competitors at the 50-yard mark. But then in the middle of my breast stroke I swallowed water, and then more, and then a third gulp failed to get me air. Once you're in a rhythm, it's hard to break it, even if it is all wrong! I panicked and paused at the wall before finishing the 25-yard segment of freestyle. I looked over to my competitors and half of them were just starting their freestyle segment, so I threw on some power and plowed through the water on that last segment. I finished ahead of a few of them. My time was two seconds off my personal best. Not bad, considering the situation.

Event #2: 100-yard Backstroke
Time: 1:22.61
Age Group Rank: 2 out of 2
My second event was the 100 Backstroke. I avoided backstroke all last year but now I'm really enjoying it. I guessed at a seed time since I had not done this event before. The swim felt good and I finished almost 5 seconds faster than I expected. My quadriceps were burning now, but they recovered during the 20 min before my next event.

Event #3: 100-yard butterfly
Time: 1:20.24
Age Group Rank: 3 out of 3
My third event was the 100 Butterfly. I have been working on my butterfly stroke with my coach recently, and as a consequence I am a little less confident about it. Does that make sense? Let me explain: My work with the coach has revealed to me that my stroke wasn’t as good as I thought, so now I am working on fixing all the little problems. My work is not complete, so I swam this event with a knowingly imperfect stroke. (Of course, it will always be imperfect…). Nevertheless, I did the first 50 yards with ease and then got tired at the end. My finish was more than a second faster than my personal best. I got mildly nauseous following this swim (a sign of lactic acid buildup), so I know I put in 100% effort. That’s a good feeling, since you know you swam as fast as you could and couldn’t have done any better.

Event #4: 25-yard breaststroke
Time: 17.56
Age Group Rank: 1 out of 1
My last event was the 25-yard Breaststroke. I purposely chose an easy swim as my last event because I knew that I’d be tired by this time. My dive went quite deep so it took too much time for me to surface. This caused a mediocre performance of 17.56 seconds, about a third of a second slower than my personal best. All in all, I am very happy with my swims today.